The Nation back issues from November 2004:
Our (former) Arab friends.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 01, 2004; ... Tacoma, Wash. Charles Glass does a masterful job of refuting Bernard Lewis's prejudices ["Lewis of Arabia," Sept. 13]. Glass tells us, "In 1957 the United States ... was more popular in the Arab world than it is today." I know: I was there. We were not only popular; Arabs were ...
Nader: nobody's 'idiot'.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 01, 2004; ... Eric Alterman hit the proverbial hornet's nest with his October 4 "Liberal Media" column on Ralph Nader, titled "Bush's Useful Idiot." Huge numbers of Nader's supporters--calling the column everything from "spittle-flecked spew" to a "guilt-tripping," "vicious,""seething dismissal of ...
The double life of James Baker.(A Special Investigation)
Nov 01, 2004; ... When President Bush appointed former Secretary of State James Baker III as his envoy on Iraq's debt on December 5, 2003, he called Baker's job "a noble mission." At the time, there was widespread concern about whether Baker's extensive business dealings in the Middle East would compromise ...
Follow the money: Bush has revived the Christian right through direct federal largesse.
Nov 01, 2004; ... Five years ago the Christian right was in a tenuous position. Its standard-bearer, the Christian Coalition, was under investigation by the IRS and the Federal Election Commission, and many of its state chapters were nearing collapse. Its lead organizers were fleeing so fast that one former ...
Rocking the Cuban vote: how an anti-bush backlash is creating divisions in once-monolithic Miami.
Nov 01, 2004; ... This article is part of a series that looks at swing states, and swing constituencies, in the 2004 presidential election. --The Editors George W. Bush's brand of compassion doesn't please all of Florida's conservatives these days. The limited-Spanish-proficient ...
Freeze-out of the Arabists: the neocons have isolated state department experts--with disastrous results.
Nov 01, 2004; ... Ronald Schlicher is a senior official in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, an enclave for America's Arab specialists. He is the kind of Middle East expert who would presumably be in the vanguard of officials bound for Baghdad to run the US Embassy there. A ...
Learning to love the bomb.(Book Review)
Nov 01, 2004; ... Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove. By Peter Goodchild. Harvard. 469 pp. $29.95. While I saw Edward Teller at several scientific conferences and heard him lecture, I met him only once. It left an indelible memory. It was at the end of April 1954. By this time I was far ...
About Henry.(Book Review)
Nov 01, 2004; ... Author, Author. By David Lodge. Viking. 389 pp. $24.95. The Master. By Colm Toibin. Scribner. 338 pp. $25. Henry James is not a name that springs to mind when we think of adventure stories, prose epics or historical fiction. His forte was sensibility, not spectacle, in both art ...
Presumed innocent.(Theater Review)
Nov 01, 2004; ... Guantanamo: honor bound to defend freedom Unlike news reports, theater isn't expected to stick to the facts. By nature, the form is duplicitous, built on a sandy foundation of make-believe and pretense. Good documentary drama exploits its inherent paradox: Creating artifice from ...
In the cut.(Movie Review)
Nov 01, 2004; ... Moolaade * Vera Drake Throughout the four decades of his great career--which is the same thing as saying, throughout the history of filmmaking in sub-Saharan Africa--Ousmane Sembene has switched back and forth between urban and rural settings, historic and contemporary subjects, ...
Anchors aweigh: the refs are worked.(The Liberal Media)
Nov 01, 2004; ... At the opening of the Democratic convention, long before Dan Rather put a big bull's-eye on his back, Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center for the Press, Politics and Public Policy hosted Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw, together with Jim Lehrer and Judy Woodruff, to discuss the state ...
Hammer strikes--out?(Editorials)(Editorial)
Nov 01, 2004 ... Has Tom DeLay--aka The Hammer--hit his last nail? Not yet, but the Republican House majority leader has sustained his own whacks recently for a series of unethical actions. Two reports by the House Ethics Committee outline several of the corrupt ways DeLay maintains (and abuses) power; ...
Campaigner in chief.(Election Matters)
Nov 01, 2004; ... As he began his seventh campaign swing this year through the battleground state of Wisconsin on a sunny day in late September, George W. Bush loaded a secret weapon onto his bus: Dr. Britt Kolar, a physician who played on the Yale rugby team with Bush in the 1960s. Seated at Bush's side as ...
Climate, the absent issue.(Comment)
Nov 01, 2004; ... Every once in a while there is good news in this troubled world, and the choice of Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai as this year's Nobel Peace Prizewinner is one such moment. The timing could not be more apt. The choice of Maathai was announced near the end of a US presidential ...
On the web.(Comment)
Nov 01, 2004 ... ON THE WEB: Folksinger and longtime anarchist activist Utah Phillips has forgone voting for five decades as a considered ...
A White House Spokesman Explains Why the Duelfer Report's Finding That Iraq Had No Weapons of Mass Destruction Provides Justification for Having Attacked Iraq in Order to Rid It of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Nov 01, 2004; ... <Pre> A WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN EXPLAINS WHY THE DUELFER REPORT'S FINDING THAT IRAQ HAD NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROVIDES JUSTIFICATION FOR HAVING ATTACKED IRAQ IN ORDER TO RID IT OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION Though all his weapons programs wereAbandoned and defunct ...
Roe = Dred.(Comment)
Nov 01, 2004; ... Many viewers were puzzled when, toward the end of the second debate, George W. Bush answered a question about Supreme Court nominees by referring to the Dred Scott case. Why bring up the infamous 1857 decision, which declared that blacks could not be citizens and, in the notorious words of ...
Reforming three strikes.(Comment)
Nov 01, 2004; ... In November, California voters will have their first chance in a decade to reform the state's "three strikes and you're out" law, which has imposed cruel life sentences on thousands for relatively minor crimes like drug possession, shoplifting and forgery. The law represents a human rights ...
Playing the age card.(Comment)
Nov 01, 2004; ... Alan Greenspan has recently been frightening Americans again, as he did in April, by threatening that Congress will have to cut Social Security benefits to fund retirement for "aging Boomers." In fact, the trust fund is solvent until 2042 and sloshing with surpluses. Manufacturing a crisis ...
Tarantara!(Comment)
Nov 01, 2004; ... Twenty months ago, when the Bush Administration was steering the country toward war in Iraq, we noted a parallel with another military misadventure, the Spanish-American War, in which Cuba and the Philippines were both invaded [see "An Imperial Moment," December 23, 2002]. A small group of ...
Vaccine poker.(Comment)
Nov 01, 2004; ... With the announcement that 50 million influenza vaccines from the British manufacturer Chiron won't be available in the United States this year because of possible contamination, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has been put in a quandary, its credibility once again damaged. From ...
Dissent at 50.(Comment)
Nov 01, 2004; ... In the summer of 1953, the New School for Social Research hung a yellow curtain over a mural by the Mexican artist Jose Clemente Orozco. Orozco's transgression? He had included portraits of Lenin and Stalin in the work. In response to widespread criticism, the president of the institution, ...
Race against the machine.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 08, 2004; ... Albany, NY * As a David Soares campaign volunteer, I was delighted to read Katrina vanden Heuvel's weblog and Katha Pollitt's comments about Soares's campaign for district attorney of Albany County ["Subject to Debate," Oct. 25]. I believe your readers would be pleased to know ...
We didn't start the fire...(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 08, 2004; ... San Francisco * I appreciate Major Butler's candor and on-the-ground assessment of the situation in Iraq ["Letters," Oct. 18]. But Major Butler, imagine for a moment that you're a firefighter whose company has been secretly taken over by a gang of arsonists. I respect and am ...
Misquoting a misquote.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 08, 2004; ... Little Rock, Ark. * It's come to my attention that something Eric Alterman recently quoted from my Arkansas Democrat-Gazette column was in error ["The Liberal Media," Oct. 18]. I wrote this: "On May 4, 1996, the New York Times published an article with a deceptive ...
Take a zombie to lunch.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 08, 2004; ... Seattle * What a laugh I had at Alexander Cockburn's tale of the "Zombies for Kerry" in Portland, Oregon ["Beat the Devil," Sept. 13]. Perhaps their "fixity of gaze" betrays not the presence of zombies but the presence of "the evil of two lessers," the only thing beyond the ...
Those pesky wogs get restless ...(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 08, 2004; ... Boston * Jonathan Schell's "Imperialism Without Empire" [Sept. 13] suggests that the rise of anti-American hatred has coincided with and perhaps resulted from the rise of US imperial ambitions. Rebellion against empire, be it Roman, Turkish, Arab, French, Japanese, British or ...
A long four years in Midland.
Nov 08, 2004; ... I don't know what percentage of me is Midland," George W. Bush said four years ago, "but I would say people, if they want to understand me, need to understand Midland and the attitude of Midland." In Bush's rhetoric, the West Texas town is populated by people just like him--hard-workin', ...
Under the veil, who's for Kerry?
Nov 08, 2004; ... This article is the final one in a series looking at swing states, and swing constituencies, in the 2004 presidential election.--The Editors Driving down Michigan Avenue in Dearborn, a woman in a chador takes her hand off the steering wheel of her SUV to light a Marlboro ....
Plotting an Ohio surprise.
Nov 08, 2004; ... Philosophy student Julian Johannesen and photographer Cosby Lindquist have been encamped in the neighborhoods of Columbus, Ohio, for more than a year. Both were inspired back then after hearing an Al Franken speech on C-SPAN to go through the Camp Wellstone activist training program, ...
Straight down the middle: not being 'middle class,' the poor have been invisible in this campaign.
Nov 08, 2004; ... In late August, a few days before George W. Bush delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union led several hundred protesters through the streets of Manhattan on a march in support of poor people's rights. At the front of the ...
Public races to get dollars by deadline: the rush to get them at Face Value may predict our next president.(Campaign 2004: The Presidency)(Advertisement)
Nov 08, 2004; ... Citizens across the nation are jamming National Hot Line phones in an effort to get the new Campaign Dollars for their favorite candidate. So far, George W. Bush is ahead in the first round of a very tight race to get the special Dollar Bills. And right now, they are ...
100 facts and 1 opinion: the non-arguable case against the bush administration.
Nov 08, 2004 ... IRAQ 1. The Bush Administration has spent more than $140 billion on a war of choice in Iraq. 2. The Bush Administration sent troops into battle without adequate body armor or armored [?]. 3. The Bush Administration ignored estimates from Gen. Eric ...
Why I'm for Kerry.
Nov 08, 2004; ... George W. Bush said Saddam Hussein's brutal regime had chemical and biological weapons and a revived nuclear weapons program. It did not. He said Saddam's government was in cahoots with Al Qaeda. It was not (according to the 9/11 Commission and the CIA). He declared that Iraq was an ...
Why I'm (slightly) for Bush.
Nov 08, 2004; ... The election season is always hellish for people who fancy that they live by political principles, because at such a time "politics" becomes, even more than usually, a matter of show business and superficial calculation. Ever since 1980, when I bet the liberals of New York that Reagan ...
Art makes a difference; artists have been generating an accelerating torrent of anti-Bush material.
Nov 08, 2004; ... New Canaan, Connecticut, has never been anybody's idea of a hotbed of radicalism--or even of a warm bath of liberalism. The median household income of about $141,800 is more than triple the national figure, and registered Republicans outnumber Democrats three to one. Nonetheless, this ...
Five-oh for the observer.(In Fact...)
Nov 08, 2004 ... n Given Texas's sorry luck to be the home of George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, Ken Lay et al., Northern liberals sometimes forget about the state's robust progressive tradition. One of the crown gems of that lustrous heritage is The Texas Observer, which turned fifty this year. Throughout its ...
The flu story.(In Fact...)
Nov 08, 2004 ... n If it weren't potentially fatal to thousands of Americans, the flu shot crisis would be a rich source of irony. The usable vaccine comes from the Pennsylvania plant of Aventis Pasteur--a French company! In the last debate Bush said, "We're working ...
Nuclear lost and found.(In Fact...)
Nov 08, 2004 ... n In its recent twice-annual report to the Security Council, the IAEA warned that satellite imagery and open surveillance information shows "widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear program ...in many instances ...
News of the weak in review.(Brief Article)
Nov 08, 2004 ... * The Times's William Safire: "Members of Kerry's debate preparation team made Mary Cheney's private life the centerpiece of their answer to the question, especially worrisome to them, about same-sex marriage ....
Department of homeland lunacy.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 08, 2004; ... Southport, Conn. n As an addendum to my "Rudy Makes His Move" [Sept. 27], and to paraphrase Fighting Jack Valenti, "I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because" our ...
Rust, yes; rage, maybe.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 08, 2004; ... Galesburg, Ill. * Dale Maharidge's excellent "Rust and Rage in the Heartland" [Sept. 20] may overstate the link between downsized workers and reactionary, xenophobic nationalism. In my research among downsized factory workers here in Galesburg, I've spoken to Harley riders, gun ...
Devil's dictionary.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 08, 2004; ... New Haven, Conn. * During my years as a US Foreign Service officer, I relieved tension by writing topical verse. I've not outgrown the habit. <Pre>How soothing is the lexiconof PR at the Pentagon!...
Crude awakening.
Nov 08, 2004; ... On January 9, 2004, Royal Dutch/Shell, one of the world's largest publicly traded oil companies, shocked the international financial community by announcing that it had overstated its oil and gas reserves by 20 percent, representing the equivalent of 3.9 billion barrels of petroleum--worth ...
Because we could.
Nov 08, 2004; ... When George H.W. Bush invaded Panama back in 1989 (no threat to the United States, its leader a longtime CIA asset, thousands of civilian casualties: ring a bell?), Administration flacks dubbed the exercise Operation Just Cause. However, irreverent Pentagon apparatchiks assigned to plan ...
Guided by voices.(Music)(Tom Waits, Real Gone)(Bjork, Medulla)(Sound Recording Review)
Nov 08, 2004; ... Tom Waits * Bjork The new Tom Waits album begins, in very Waitsian fashion, with a racket: a squall of percussive noise that sounds like it was recorded in a freight elevator. During the first decade of his career, Waits established a unique persona and a maudlin sound--he was a ...
You can't blame Nader for this.
Nov 08, 2004; ... Let's hedge this with all the usual qualifiers. Kerry could pull it out. The spread's within the margin of error. Respondents to polls are lying out of fear of John Ashcroft. Pollsters aren't reaching Kerrycrats with cell phones. But whatever way you cut it, after three debates in which ...
Mary Cheney, Mary Cheney.(Subject to Debate)
Nov 08, 2004; ... Reservists mutiny in Iraq, old people keel over standing in line for flu shots and all sorts of cats leap out of Bush's bag of secrets: According to Ron Suskind's revelatory New York Times Magazine cover story, the President himself recently told a closed Republican meeting that if elected ...
John Kerry for President.(Editorials)
Nov 08, 2004 ... The presidential campaign debates are over, and the time for decision has come. The Nation endorses Senator John Kerry to be the next President of the United States. Any stocktaking must begin, of course, by comparing the records of Kerry and George W. Bush. Yet the upshot of ...
Nation notes.(Editorial)
Nov 08, 2004 ... Turn to page 26 and you will see "Why I'm (Slightly) for Bush" by Christopher Hitchens. No, Christopher has not resumed his Nation column. But he has accepted our invitation to share his thinking on the election. Why turn over valuable real estate to someone who has spent too much of his ...
On the web.
Nov 08, 2004 ... ON THE WEB: National affairs correspondent William Greider writes: "Fear and loathing are so intense in this campaign, one almost expects the 'blood-red moon' of the Apocalypse to rise over the Republic on election eve." Washington correspondent John Nichols says the ...
A President Who Listens To a Higher Authority.(Brief Article)(Poem)
Nov 08, 2004; ... <Pre>He can't remember one mistake.He'll stay on course till Hades freezes.How can he be so certain still?Because he's got the word from Jesus. In meetings of his White House staff,Unquestioning commitment pleases,Since human doubts mean nothing toA ...
Jews who just say no--to AIPAC.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 15, 2004; ... Warsaw, Ind. * Thank you for the article by Esther Kaplan about the silent Jewish majority! I've had a hard time believing that everyone in the Jewish community wants to wrap their arms around Ariel Sharon. You have restored my respect for Judaism. Every member of the House and ...
Up against the Wal-Mart.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
Nov 15, 2004; ... Amherst, Mass. * Kudos to Liza Featherstone for writing about the importance of unionizing Wal-Mart. However, she seems to suggest a single organizing strategy, "open source unionism," whereby individuals can join the union without having to organize their entire workplace. If ...
Who rules Afghanistan.
Nov 15, 2004; ... It is noon in northern Afghanistan, Balkh province. The autumn sky is empty and bright. A tough 60-year-old farmer named Mamood sits for an interview in the shade of a tree. Surrounding us in all directions are fields of marijuana on the verge of harvest. The plants are tall, thick and ...
Single-payer: good for business: evidence shows that countries with national healthcare are more competitive.
Nov 15, 2004; ... Business leaders complain endlessly that the current system of private healthcare insurance based on employment provides fewer and fewer people with less and less quality care at higher and higher cost. Yet Corporate America turns its back on a publicly financed system, which, by all ...
The gods must be crazy.
Nov 15, 2004; ... "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith--and I don't care what it is." Thus spoke the noted theologian Dwight Eisenhower on Flag Day in 1954. And though Ike's words may seem fatuous, they are in fact so pregnant with meaning that they deserve to ...
Darkness visible.
Nov 15, 2004; ... The remarkably gifted artist Francesca Woodman abruptly ended her brief life and career on January 19, 1981, leaping to her death from a window in her New York studio. Francesca was 22 years old. The work of her eight productive years, to which a small show at the Marian Goodman Gallery on ...
War games.(Movie Review)
Nov 15, 2004; ... Team America: World Police*Hearts and Minds In the players' handbooks that once circulated among commedia dell'arte troupes, the wandering actors of early modern Italy used to set down inventories of the lazzi, or comic turns, that were their stock in trade. Among these routines, out of ...
Two Hindus.(Poem)
Nov 15, 2004; ... <Pre> Two Hindus 1. Sarasvati Dark, dark--we can't make the room dark enoughto deceive her small and unsleeping self.She sings like bottled silver in the dark,and silence only proves she is not light-safe,unseen, onrushing, glancing herself awake. He ...
Voting blocks.(Diary Of A Mad Low)
Nov 15, 2004; ... Six more days till the election. As of this writing (October 27), nothing is certain. The election polls are bouncing around like yo-yos. Clinton is back on the campaign trail, and we are reminded of what a luxury it was when all we had to worry about was Monica-gate, but the surplus was ...
Faith-based journalism: the refs work themselves.(The Liberal Media)
Nov 15, 2004; ... Even though we've lived with it for more than thirty years now, it's hard not to marvel at the effectiveness of the right's campaign to intimidate, cajole and complain their way into favorable treatment from the mainstream media for their candidates and causes. What's so interesting is ...
Carlyle covers up.(Look Out)(Editorial)
Nov 15, 2004; ... Less than twenty-four hours after The Nation disclosed that former Secretary of State James Baker and the Carlyle Group were involved in a secret deal to profit from Iraq's debt to Kuwait, NBC was reporting that the deal was "dead." At The Nation, we started to get calls congratulating us ...
Fix the electoral system.(Editorials)(Editorial)
Nov 15, 2004 ... Before most votes were cast in the November 2 presidential election, and before any of them were counted, tens of millions of Americans worried about whether the nation's patchwork of systems for casting and counting ballots would break down as badly as it did in 2000. Six in ten Americans ...
Iraq's civilian casualties.(Comment)
Nov 15, 2004; ... The civilians of Falluja are negotiating to stave off a threatened US-led military incursion. American military spokesmen insist that US-led forces will do their utmost to spare civilian bystanders. But if they don't, the newly free Iraqi press will have trouble reporting the story. The ...